Jonathan’s Comments (group member since Oct 02, 2013)

Jonathan’s comments from the Ask Jonathan Coe - Thursday, October 31st! group.

Paul wrote: "Mr. Coe,

Really enjoy your books, especially "The Rotters Club" and "Maximillian Sim". Your work is typically very British.

What is your opinion of the recent changes to Man Booker Prize eligibi..."

Hi Paul. I do think it’s time we had a prize which is open to both British authors and Americans but of course there is already a new prize – the Folio – which was set up to do precisely that. The Booker on the other hand has always had a distinctive character which derives from its emphasis on the UK and the Commonwealth, and I’m personally sorry that this will be lost now. For the next few years the only discussion around the Booker Prize is going to be whether British writers are as good as Americans, a topic which could soon become boring. Speaking personally, as a writer I feel far more European than Anglo-American, and yet this new development tilts the balance unmistakeably towards the Anglo-American axis. To me the most potentially interesting prize around at the moment is the Prix du Livre Européen. But it doesn’t quite get the publicity of the Booker.

Palmyrah wrote: "Hello, Jonathan,

I'm Richard, from Sri Lanka.

My question is about the end of The Rotters' Club. Great book, by the way, I absolutely loved it. But why did you choose to end it with the longest s..."

Hello, Richard. I wanted to express the sudden rush of excitement and happiness that is felt by one of the characters (Benjamin Trotter) in the few seconds it takes him to raise a glass of beer from the table to his mouth. Hundreds of memories and impressions tumbling through his mind in that instant. Instinctively, I thought that some sort of stream of consciousness technique was called for. I didn’t plan to write the whole thing as a continuous sentence at first, but when I got about four pages in and realised that I hadn’t used a full stop yet, I knew that this was what it was going to be. Incidentally I think its status as the longest sentence in English has been overtaken by at least one other writer in the last twelve years. Yes, I do think it was the right ending for the book – although I’m aware that (as is the case with many of my endings) there are readers who don’t like it.

Rob wrote: "Hi Jonathan! Form or content?"

Hi Rob! Both, of course.

Steph wrote: "Hello Jonathan,

I've read a lot of your fiction and (more recently) your biography on B.S. Johnson, which I found fascinating. My question is about The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim. I noticed f..."

There’s not much point in worrying about it. If you tried to make everything so simple and so clear that no reader would ever misunderstand your books, what you ended up writing would be extremely bland. Besides, once a book is published and sent out into the world, readers own it – you have surrendered it to them – and you can have no control over how they interpret it. All you can do is move on to the next one.

E. wrote: "Really enjoyed your pieces on Boris Johnson and Flann O'Brien from the the London Review of Books this year. Any chance of a collection of non-fiction?"

Yes, there is one coming out (ebook only) at the beginning of December. It’s called Marginal Notes, Doubtful Statements and contains both the pieces you mentioned, as well as lots of others going all the way back to 1990. I’d insert a link to the amazon page if I knew how to …